Laughing off reports of his Test comeback, retired Australian opener Justin Langer said his "tongue-in-cheek" remark about being available for Ashes for free has been taken too seriously by the media.
"One of the boys in the Somerset changing room asked me, 'If they asked you to play tomorrow, how much would it take?' and I said I would play the third Test for Australia next week for nothing," Langer said on Cricket Australia's official website.
"I'm certainly not interested in making a Test comeback," he added.
Langer revealed that former England opener Marcus Trescothick was the person who asked him that question.
"There was a bit of a tongue-in-cheek conversation between myself and Marcus Trescothick in the change rooms about what it would take for him to play next week with (Kevin) Pietersen injured...The point I was making was, as a kid in the backyard all you want to do is play in an Ashes Test.
"I mean, who wouldn't? It's the greatest thing in the world. But that was it, it was just a tongue-in-cheek comment," he recalled.
{{/usCountry}}"I mean, who wouldn't? It's the greatest thing in the world. But that was it, it was just a tongue-in-cheek comment," he recalled.
{{/usCountry}}Langer recently broke Sir Don Bradman's record of scoring most runs in domestic cricket.